What are some signs that a therapist may have poor boundaries with their clients?
Last Updated: 19.06.2025 02:25
Failing to mention the client in supervision/consultation, out of fear the supervisor/consultant will advise return to ordinary healthy boundaries.
General Introduction to Boundaries from Panahi Counseling:
Frequent phoning or texting of clients to “check up on them and make sure they’re OK.”
How far back into your childhood can your remember and what is your favorite memory of that time?
Serious disappointment when the client cancels a session.
Routinely going over the time limit with certain patients, compromising the time for the next client.
Session-expressed curiosities about client details not relevant to the therapy.
What do most wives fantasize about?
Eager anticipation (or anxious anticipation) of the next session in ways that distract.
Struggling with fantasies of deeper connections with clients, whether sexual or parental or other intense or intimate relationships beyond psychotherapy.
Disclosing feelings, fantasies, and experiences to the client in ways not related to the work the client is engaged in.
How rough can the ferry passage from Hull to Rotterdam be in the autumn ( at the end of October )?
Sense of competition with persons who are important in the client’s life.
Obsessing about clients outside of work hours.
These items can happen fleetingly, briefly, in any therapy, but if they’re frequent, it’s definitely time for the therapist to get some good, solid supervision/consultation.
Off the top of my ancient head: